


Nothing Half So Much Worth Doing

by sanguinity



Series: Tegmore [3]
Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Live Bush Universe, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 21:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: It was a perfect day, entirely golden, such as he had once longed for and dreaded in equal measure. The captain of the Lydia would have been horrified.





	Nothing Half So Much Worth Doing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColebaltBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/gifts).



> ColebaltBlue and I were making ourselves unhappy with Hornblower headcanons one day when she said, "I want him to have a moment goddamn carefree happiness where he makes out with his boyfriend and realizes that it's really fucking nice." 
> 
> Which of course meant the Tegmore universe, aka my Happily Ever After timeline for Bush/Hornblower. 
> 
> Thanks to ColebaltBlue for the prompt and encouragement, and grrlpup for beta.

Horatio was ignoring his ledger-books in favor of the window overlooking Tegmore's grounds when he spied William and Richard making their way, hand in hand, down through the gardens. Richard abruptly tucked his feet up and let himself hang deadweight from William's arm, causing William to stagger a step under the sudden load. But two years striding the leaping quarterdeck of the _Nonsuch_ had made him too steady on his legs, both good and false, to be seriously upset by the abrupt weight of a small boy. He recovered his balance, and two deliberate steps later, with a wrench and a heave, he swung Richard a good six feet through the air to land him solidly on his feet again. Richard tilted his head back in a crow of delight, inaudible from Horatio's vantage point. 

Miss Smith, the governess, came running into view at the top of the gardens, and Horatio opened the casement window to see the little drama better. William turned back and called something to her; the breeze stole his words, but not the rumble of his voice.  But Horatio's attention was caught by the bulky objects under William's free arm, revealed when he turned. Curious, Horatio took up his glass. Wooden hulls, the white stretch of a sail: toy boats. 

Negotiations continued between sea captain and governess. Then Miss Smith fell in beside William and Richard, and the small party continued on to the reflecting pond at the bottom of the garden.

Horatio slid his glass shut, smiling to himself at the joy of a small boy released from the schoolroom to play with boats on a bright May day. Below, Richard lifted his legs again; again William swung him forward to place him solidly on the ground.  

After a moment's consideration, Horatio re-latched the window and left his accounts as they lay.

 

As it turned out, Richard had exchanged one kind of schoolroom for another: Horatio found a sailing lesson underway at the pond's edge, William soberly setting the trim of each little boat and quizzing Richard on which way he expected the small craft to go. The objective of the game, however, had clearly been set by Richard himself: no elegant fleet maneuvers here, no crossing the tee or jockeying to gain the weather gauge. No, this game was sheer gay carnage, the bald attempt to viciously ram one boat with another. Richard windmilled wildly at the pond's edge, urging one boat into the other, and booed with disappointment at every narrow miss.

Then there was a solid hit, one boat capsizing from the force of the blow. Richard gave a lusty cheer and plunged barefoot into the pond to rescue the foundering boat and set the game going anew. William took the moment's respite to give Horatio an embarrassed shrug, but Horatio only shook his head and smiled: he too was helpless in the face of the child's joys. Then Richard was back, pushing the toy boat into William's hands, insisting on vengeance toward the victor, and William returned to his assigned task.

It was a lazy way to spend the afternoon, half-reclining in the grass, watching his friend and his son bent over their toys together, jointly deciding on their strategy before Richard scampered off around the edge of the pond to set one boat loose upon the other again. Another cataclysmic hit, and Richard called eagerly for his father to witness the destruction he had caused. Horatio nodded his approval. 

Richard spent more time in the pond than out, impatient at the slow progress of the boats across its width. Mid-retrieval of one errant boat, his head snapped up at a sound beyond the bottom of the garden. Horatio turned to look: the groom had turned the coach horses out into the upper pasture. 

Richard turned a beseeching look on his father. "Please, Daddy?"

"Put your shoes on first," Horatio said, dimly remembering some advice about horses and bare feet. Privately, he doubted the efficacy of Richard's shoes in protecting his small toes from such monstrous creatures.

Richard plunged noisily through the water to the edge of the pond before a rebuke from William sent him back in again after the abandoned boats. Boats safely deposited on William's knees, Richard allowed Miss Smith to dry his feet in her skirts, and somehow managed to don his stockings and shoes while never taking his eyes off the two horses. Then he was running down to the bottom of the garden and the pasture gate, snatching up some grass for the horses as he went. Miss Smith trailed after him.

"He'll never be a sailor," Horatio said, watching his son climb on the gate to reach the horses.

"He's a good lad," William said staunchly, as if Horatio's observation had been a criticism. Then, shyly: "I thought to build a boat for his birthday. He's getting to be old enough to help."

Horatio smiled to himself, wondering where Lieutenant Bush, the terror of all young midshipmen, had gone.

"I suspect he'd prefer a pony." Indeed, Horatio had already begun consulting with the boy's godmother on the topic. Horatio himself knew nothing of horses.

"You're not disappointed? It seems a waste," William said, and Horatio turned to look at him curiously. The afternoon's game aside, the boy had never shown any special attraction to ships or boats. "Of your name, I mean." Patronage, William really meant. Richard's way would be considerably easier than theirs had been, if he chose the Navy. Horatio shook his head.

"He has the Lords Wellesley and Wellington for godfathers. He'll have patronage no matter what he does." Curious, how it barely stung his pride to say so; there was much that Horatio would endure for Richard's sake. "I'd rather see him at Eton, or in the Horse Guards, than in a midshipman's berth." 

If it came to it, Horatio could certainly find Richard a better berth than the _Justinian_ had been. But even in a good berth, under a strong and attentive captain… Horatio had seen too many midshipmen die young and horribly: of disease, of accident, of malice. Of battle. It was best that Richard had no interest in the Navy. 

Atop the gate, with his governess' hand at his back, Richard continued to thrust his handful of grass at an uninterested horse.

Horatio turned back to William. "Come, let me see that," Horatio said, sitting up from where he lay on the lawn, and William handed one of the boats across. It was nothing more than a toy: a deep-keeled hull, a rudder, a single mast and rudimentary sail, entirely unlike the loving model of the late _Hotspur,_ also built by William's capable hands, that graced Horatio's study. Horatio ran his fingertips over the hull, tracing its lines, calculating its potential. "How close to the wind does she sail?" he asked, adjusting the trim of her sail and rudder with an eye to the bit of string at her masthead acting as a pennant. 

"Shall we try it and see?" William returned, taking up the other boat himself.

With a grin, Horatio divested himself of shoes and stockings and dandled his skinny legs in the reflecting pool. Then he leaned forward, and together they set their boats free in the water.

 

Horatio never returned to his ledgers that afternoon. He and William messed about with the toy boats until nearly dinnertime, then walked Richard back up to the house, the boy swinging between their hands as he prattled about every inconsequentiality of the horses. When coordinating his steps to William's became too much to manage as William laboured up the steps to the house, Horatio hoisted his son pick-a-back, and delighted in the grubby arms slung tightly about his neck.

Dinner was a quiet affair, Richard in the nursery and William dabbing mustard on his plate like the old sailor he was. Horatio realised that he was idly waiting for the accustomed gloom to settle upon him — guilt over the neglected ledgers, perhaps, or self-consciousness to have been seen spending the afternoon on toy boats — but it somehow never came. 

After dinner they retired to their separate pursuits — or so Horatio thought, until he found himself following William to the homely room where his collection of fine knives and finer files accumulated. William's battered table by the window was well-lit in daylight and adequately so in lamplight; the rugs had long since been taken away to save them from wood shavings. It was here that the model of the _Hotspur_ had taken shape, before it came to reside in Horatio's study.

"May I join you?" Horatio asked from the door. William ushered him to the battered armchair before the fire and sacrificed a lamp for Horatio to read by. Soon William drew up another chair by the fire, his workpiece small enough to hold in his hands and the work not so exacting as to require better light.

Horatio didn't know what this model would prove to be. A ship of the line, he guessed from its proportions, but whether it was the _Nonsuch,_ William's first and only command, or perhaps the venerable _Temeraire,_ on which William had served at Trafalgar and whose breaking-up he had overseen at Sheerness, Horatio couldn't say. Horatio had long known that Bush had a queer sentimental streak, and yet it still flattered and baffled him that the _Hotspur,_ not the _Nonsuch,_ had been the first effort of those scarred hands.

Presently William's knife stilled, and Horatio looked up from his book to find his friend staring into the fire. 

"He _would_ prefer a pony," William told the fire, and for the first time Horatio wondered if it was William who regretted that Richard would never be a sailor. First as a visitor to Tegmore and then as a resident, William had always taken a keen interest in the boy; his gifts to the child, frequent and generous, had invariably been nautical. 

Horatio cast about for something to say that might be a comfort.

"Riding tack can't possibly be more abstruse than a seventy-four's rigging," he finally offered, keenly aware of his own awkwardness.

The corner of William's mouth quirked; he cast his friend an amused glance. "Certainly not," he affirmed. 

The knife resumed its steady work.

But Horatio's concentration was broken; he did not return to his book. Instead he watched William with a strange mix of contentment and... _longing,_ he might have said, but longing for what? The disappointments and losses of yesteryear seemed distant and unreal.

The wood took shape in William's callused hands. 

The feeling had become almost too much to bear when Richard came in to say good night. The boy crawled into Horatio's lap, kissed him sweetly and told him about his evening in the nursery; Horatio let him look at the colored plates in his book. Then Richard got down and unselfconsciously hugged Captain Bush good night; Horatio felt the pressure in his own breast, to watch those strong arms go around his son and hold him tight.

"You used to terrify the midshipmen," Horatio said when Richard and his governess had quit the room. Decades Horatio had known William, and there had been no hint of this avuncular figure in his iron first lieutenant, nor even in the captain he eventually became. Affection for his own captain and commodore, perhaps, but that was all.

William laughed, unconcerned by the charge. "It did them good. Do you remember…" he began, gesturing with the knife for emphasis, and embarked on a story about an ill-fated young gentleman of the _Lydia._ Horatio remembered the boy, a gangling awkward youth, not particularly gifted. But he knew nothing of the subsequent story William told about the young man's travails and his resulting bedevilment by Bush. Horatio had spent that voyage self-sequestered from his officers for fear of becoming too intimate with them; much of their day-to-day lives had passed him by. 

He had feared becoming too intimate with William, in particular. And look at them now. He had been right to worry, as if he had been able to foresee this future awaiting him, longed for and dreaded in equal measure. 

And now it was here, and entirely golden, populated with a beloved son, a cherished friend, and toy boats. The captain of the _Lydia_ would have been horrified.

"Go to bed, before you fall sleep where you sit," William said. "You've been dreaming all evening."

"I've been thinking," Horatio protested, but shut his book. 

"About what?" William asked, and Horatio could hear the echo of the suppressed _sir._

He shook his head. He felt profoundly lazy, too lazy to bestir himself from William's chair, or to philosophize about how peace had changed them.

William accepted the lack of answer with an indulgent smile and turned his attention back to his work. 

"Go to bed," William said again, and Horatio opened his eyes, unaware that he had shut them. It took him a moment to focus on William's face, lit by the firelight. There was fond amusement in his expression. At some point he had exchanged the knife for a bit of sandpaper.

William was right; he was falling asleep in his chair. He stretched and rose, and came to stand by his friend, his hand on his shoulder. "You should sleep yourself." 

William reached up to touch his hand, caressed it. Horatio clasped William's fingers in return. 

"I just want to rough in the stepping for the masts, first." 

Horatio still didn't know if the model ship was the _Nonsuch_ or the _Temeraire._ It didn't matter. "Be careful not to spoil it, working so late."

William laughed, and pressed a kiss to Horatio's fingers. "I won't."

Horatio squeezed William's hand — again he felt the pressure in his own chest — and wished him good night.

 

Sometime later, Horatio was roused by the quiet _thunk_ of William's step and a vertical stripe of candlelight falling on the bed curtains. The stripe widened as the candle came into the room. A door latched shut. Horatio had been dreaming of dazzling azure and argent, and it took him a few muzzy-headed moments to understand that the candlelit dark was William's spacious bedchamber at Tegmore, and not one of Horatio's own cramped shipboard cabins; that William's step was in the room with him, and not on the decking above. Horatio snuggled deeper into the bedclothes, curled around William's hot water bottle and with his own at his feet, and listened while William moved about the room, undressing. William was murmuring to himself as he went; it took the sleepy Horatio an unconscionably long time to realise that William must be humming. It was too quiet a sound to be unpleasant. The light came nearer, was set on the bedside table. William pushed back the curtain, and stopped.

"Sir?" he asked, startled into the old formality; it made Horatio smile. William was pleasingly bare-torsoed, his breech-buttons undone. The candlelight illuminated his ribs and side most fetchingly. 

"You should have said something," William said, a note of betrayal in his voice. "I wouldn't have stayed up so late."

"You were working," Horatio answered, too content to be repentant. 

William gave an aggrieved sigh and turned to sit himself on the edge of the bed to finish undressing; Horatio untangled an arm from the bedclothes to stroke William's newly-bared hip. William unfastened his leg, then folded his clothes neatly and hung his leg in the becket on the wall, everything ready-to-hand and exactly so, as if he might be called to duty in the middle of the night. Horatio smiled to himself to watch it; William was a man of long and well-established habit. William extinguished the candle and lifted the covers, and for a moment his torso arched over Horatio in the dark; Horatio reached for William's chest and shoulders, his friend's scent rich around him. And then the delicious, decadent, always-surprising pleasure of William's skin sliding along the length of his body. The water-bottle was a sudden annoyance, and Horatio impatiently got rid of it, then his nightshirt, too; William obligingly hitched tighter against him. His skin was cool, and Horatio took William's foot between both of his to warm it. Then they lay still, chest-to-chest, exchanging little sips of kisses.

"You really should have said something," William said again, but his nails scritched lightly over Horatio's back and the scolding went unheard in the delight of the sensation. Horatio groaned and pushed his face into William's shoulder, shamelessly arching his back into William's touch, and William, ever indulgent of Horatio's pleasures, drew his nails in long, slow strokes down Horatio's back, tracing delicate, rapturous fire over the aching expanse of Horatio's skin. William worked methodically, never flagging, and the twinned ecstasy and craving built on themselves until they threatened to overwhelm Horatio. "That's enough," he finally said, panting into William's collarbone, and William's hand went flat and soothing. 

It was too much feeling, and Horatio set his lips, then his teeth against William's skin to relieve it. William ducked his chin and they were kissing again, long slow caresses of lips and tongues. Horatio scraped his own nails lightly against William's back, and it was William's turn to groan, and arch shamelessly, and be soothed after. They lazily traded kisses in the dark, given and taken and given again, skin sliding against skin, and Horatio was too content to imagine wanting anything else in the world.

"Thank you," he said, some time after they had come to rest. William, halfway to sleep, made an indistinct noise of inquiry. "For today," Horatio said, and the words seemed grossly inadequate. "For being so good with Richard," he tried again, at a loss to convey what it meant to see Richard's fair head bent together with William's darker one, or Richard's small hand held trustingly in William's. 

William's hands: so large and scarred and horny, so strong and competent, so gentle with Richard.

"He's a good lad," William said, embarrassed at the praise. "Quick, like his father."

"Happy," Horatio corrected. The boy was happy, as Horatio had never been. 

But that wasn't true: Horatio was happy now. He stroked a hand over William's side, testing the idea. He marvelled when he found it sound, and kissed William again, fervent with the gift of it.

"Like his father," Horatio whispered, daring to give the thought breath. 

William's hand tightened on his side, drew him closer. 

And Horatio lay so, pressed tightly against William in the dark, in giddy delight.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Messing About](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18088403) by [ColebaltBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/pseuds/ColebaltBlue)




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